She was silent.
‘You OK?’
‘Yes. Yes. I’m OK. I think – um – when – when would she be called?’
‘This afternoon, possibly. After the judge sees Emmie. Possibly tomorrow morning.’
‘So I have a little time to decide?’
‘Yes, but only a little. Until Emmie has had her interview with Clifford Rogers at the very latest. We have to get her in, she’s at Philip’s office, waiting. Eliza, for the love of God, why are you so against it?’
‘Two reasons,’ she said slowly. ‘I’d better tell you what it was about. Not the row itself, it was about the article, in the paper, but what I said to provoke it. To provoke him. I said something appalling to Matt, really appalling, I couldn’t even tell you, I’m so ashamed of it – and it would come out, and, well and anyway, I – I don’t think I want Emmie knowing her daddy hit me. I really don’t. It would get in the papers, God, I can see the headline now, they’d love it, I just can’t risk it, Toby.’
‘Well – as I say, it could win you the case. It’s a gift from God, I’d say.’
‘Or the devil.’
She looked at him; he smiled at her.
‘Please think about it really carefully. This is probably the most important decision you’ll ever make. You have to understand just how important. We are very far from being in a position of strength, you know.’
‘I do know. Can we – I mean is it all right not to call her?’
‘Yes, of course. No one owns a witness. And besides, we are so far into the proceedings, the judge would be extremely irritated if we produced her now, to put it mildly. I can simply tell Georgina it is too late.’
‘But – we could call her? If we wanted to.’
‘Oh yes. I’m pretty confident he’d agree. It’s pretty compelling evidence. Look – Eliza, please don’t rush this, I beg of you. Take your time.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘yes, all right.’
Mariella got back to the Ritz just after one. The pain and the suffocating sense of loss had eased with her court appearance; she had enjoyed it, given it her all. It had been a most wonderful distraction: but now she was back, back in the real world, and she had to have lunch with Giovanni and Jeremy.
Panic overwhelmed her; she went and sat in the Ladies and smoked a cigarette to calm her nerves; and then, having sprayed herself with Arpège, smoothed her hair, checked her lipstick, she took a deep breath, lifted her head and walked with great determination into the vast gilded foyer of the Ritz.
In his office at the agency, Jeremy was also smoking; and on his second glass of champagne. The ordeal ahead of him was considerable; lunching with the woman he loved more than anything in the world, and with whom he had experienced extreme passion and extraordinary intimacy, while behaving throughout as if she was simply a friend, and all in the company of her husband – combined with the very real danger that they might give themselves away. Giovanni was no foolish old man, he was sharp and sharp-eyed, endowed with much perspicacity; it was not impossible that he would observe a glance, a smile, an awkwardness even, and construe it correctly.
But – there was no help for it. He had considered illness, urgent meetings, pressing family business, and rejected them all. Giovanni would read, correctly, that these were excuses and wonder why they were being proffered.
He walked into the lobby as Mariella did; smiled at her, bowed slightly, and brushed his lips against the cheek she lifted to his.
‘Hello.’
‘Hello, Jeremy.’
‘How did the court appearance go?’
‘I think very well. Thank you. Shall we go in?’
‘Yes.’
The maître d’ bustled to greet them; Jeremy put his hand on her back, very gently, to usher her forward; she turned very briefly – clearly quite unable to help herself – to smile at him; her eyes were huge and very soft; he smiled back into them, unable to help himself either.
Giovanni was already at the table; he saw them approaching, stood up to greet them, clearly delighted that they had arrived together. He was looking particularly wonderful, Mariella noticed distractedly, wearing a soft linen suit, and a shirt of palest blue, his white hair, thick and wavy still, brushed back, perfectly groomed: altogether the epitome of old-world elegance.
He smiled, his enchanting, embracing smile, and his eyes, those piercing blue eyes were, she noticed, particularly brilliant; he held out both his hands in greeting, took a step forward, said ‘my’ and stopped, then said it again, ‘my’, and then his face changed, distorted, twisted, his legs buckled and Jeremy only just reached him in time to catch him as he fell, and laid him on the floor where he lay, struggling with dreadful rasping breaths, his eyes wide, his body rigid.
Mariella sank onto the floor beside him, cradling his head; Jeremy knelt beside her, loosening Giovanni’s tie, calling for cushions, for help; and just for a moment the world shrank to the three of them, held there, a shocking tableau; and then others moved in, the maître d’ said a doctor was coming, a nurse appeared, issuing instructions, and then with extraordinary speed a doctor who took his pulse, listened to his heart, and said he should be taken to the medical room, to await the ambulance he had already called; and Jeremy and Mariella found themselves moved away from the centre of the storm, mere helpless onlookers, and terribly afraid.
But by the time they had reached the medical room, and the stretcher had been placed on the floor, the dreadful rasping breathing had first eased and then stopped; the brilliant eyes had become dim and dull, the face somehow collapsed; and with a final whispery sigh, Giovanni’s long and wonderfully blessed life was ended.
The ambulance had arrived, and the medics with it, but Mariella sent them away: ‘He is gone now, there is no rush, I want him taken to our room, I want to spend time with him. Please.’
Her tone, initially shaky, became peremptory on that ‘please’; the doctor looked at her, looked at Jeremy, paused for a moment and then nodded.
And in a very little while, Mariella and Giovanni were alone together in their room.
She felt strangely calm; they had lain him on the bed, and she sat there beside him, cradling his fine old head, stroking his face, telling him she loved him; the window was open, the table on the balcony still set with the morning coffee he had sent for; and the sweet fresh air filled the room, along with the birdsong, overlaid now with the sounds of London, but it was still very much a safe and private space, and she could still inhabit it with him, and wanted to do so.
And sitting with Giovanni, looking at him as he lay there so sweetly peaceful, she thought that she had anticipated this moment many times over the years, of course she had, but had feared that since the advent of Jeremy into her life there might be something unseemly, unloving, a sense of relief even about it, but she felt only sorrow and loss and a wave of intense gratitude to this man, this brilliant, beautiful, loving man who had done so much to make her into the creature she was and been so proud that he had done so; and she bent and kissed his forehead, and his still, white, oddly empty face, and a tear fell on it, and then another, and she sat there for a long time, holding his hand and remembering all that they had shared and done together and thinking what a truly immense loss to her this was.
‘Oh – oh, Mummy, oh no—’
Sarah looked at Eliza, her eyes large with distress.
‘I’m sorry, darling, so sorry.’
Emmie, dressed in blue-and-white striped Osh Kosh dungarees, with a white T-shirt underneath, and sneakers on her feet, smiled at her mother.
‘Hello, Mummy.’
‘Emmie, darling – I did want you to wear a dress, to look pretty for the judge—’
‘I know. But I wanted to wear my dungys. I feel better in them.’
‘What sort of better?’
‘Just better. More happy.’
‘She said—’ Sarah spoke in a low voice, ‘she said if I made her wear a dress, she’d run away.’
Eliza gave up. She knew actually how Emmie felt. Clothes were great influencers of mood.
‘All right, darling. Well – you look very nice. Now come and meet everyone, this gentleman is Mr Gordon, and this is his assistant, Sarah.’
‘Hello, Emmie. Very nice to have you here.’
‘It’s nice to be here,’ said Emmie politely. She looked round the atrium with a thoughtful expression. ‘It’s like a church,’ she said.
‘I know. But you’ll see the judge in a little room.’
‘I don’t mind big rooms.’
‘No, darling, I know—’
‘Hello, Emmie.’ Toby Gilmour had arrived.
‘Hello. I like your wig.’
‘Thank you. How’s Mouse?’
‘He’s fine.’
‘They’re ready, Eliza. Mrs Fullerton-Clark, how nice to see you again.’
‘And you. Have you recovered from your enforced sojourn in the Home Counties?’
‘Oh – yes. Thank you.’
‘How fortunate there was somewhere you could both stay.’
‘Indeed.’
‘And – how is the car?’
‘Oh – fine. Yes. Thank you.’
‘Jolly bad luck.’
‘Well – in some ways.’
Philip Gordon’s default expression was one of courteous interest; this sharpened almost imperceptibly now as he looked at Toby.
There was a sudden whoop of ‘Daddy’ and Emmie had shaken her hand free of her mother’s and shot across the atrium of the Law Courts, almost knocking over a heavily bewigged gentleman, and up into her father’s arms.
And Matt stood there, his face buried in her long, shining hair, holding her close; and for a long moment nobody moved, and then, ‘Well,’ said Philip Gordon. ‘Shall we all go up?’
Emmie slithered down and took Matt’s hand, then turned to wait for her mother and took hers also and walked up the great staircase between them; and everyone involved in the case, which included Judge Clifford Rogers, on his way to his rooms, became most forcibly aware that what was about to happen to this little family was nothing less than a small, and possibly quite a large, tragedy.
At the top of the stairs, Emmie leaned over the balustrade, studying her surroundings; then, ‘Can we explore?’ she said.
‘Later, darling, later,’ said Eliza. She could hear her voice quaver. She mustn’t let Emmie think she was nervous: it might affect her.
Standing outside the judge’s rooms, she almost panicked; she wanted to grab Emmie, take her away, run down the stairs with her, out into the street, anything rather than subject her to this dreadful ordeal. Her grip on Emmie’s hand tightened.
‘Now, darling – just answer the judge’s questions, all right? And—’
The door opened; a female clerk appeared.
‘Is this Emmeline?’
‘Yes,’ said Emmie before anyone else could speak.
‘Come along in, Emmeline. Mr Rogers has tea for you both, and some biscuits…’
‘Chocolate?’ asked Emmie hopefully.
‘I believe there are some of those, yes.’
Emmie followed the woman into the room, turning to smile at the small group before she vanished. ‘Bye,’ she said.
‘Give her twenty years,’ said Toby, ‘and she’ll be conducting cases herself.’
They had taken Giovanni away from her now; there had to be a postmortem, they explained gently; after that, he could lie in a chapel of rest, while she made arrangements to take him home.
‘Which of course I want to do, he must be buried in Italy, where he belongs.’
‘Of course,’ said Jeremy.
They were sitting in the suite, talking; it was where she wanted to be.
‘I feel so dreadful, Jeremy, so bad. Supposing that happened because he saw us, coming in together, suppose he guessed—’
‘Mariella, he was expecting us together.’
‘I know, I know, but you kissed me out there in the foyer, suppose he saw that—’
‘Darling one, I kissed your cheek. As I have a hundred times in his presence. You must, must try not to think this way. He had no idea, none at all, he greeted me last night as he always did, you saw, he insisted I joined you for lunch today, he was smiling as he came to greet us—’
‘I know. And I – I know you are right. It just feels – oh I don’t know. Confused. So frightened.’
‘Of course. Of course it is. And there is something very important I have to tell you, Mariella. Very important.’
‘What is that?’
‘All I feel is sorrow. Dreadful, dreadful sorrow. Nothing else.’
‘I too. Just the same. And guilt, of course. I can’t help that. That I didn’t stay with him this morning. He had a headache, I should not have gone—’
‘Did he ask you to stay? Was it very bad?’
‘No, no, he said I must go, that Eliza needed me. He came to see me off.’
‘Well then. How could you have known?’
‘I should. I should have thought, the doctor said it was probably something to do with his brain, perhaps the pain was very bad, and he hid it from me—’
‘My darling, he looked the picture of health in the restaurant, you saw it yourself, smiling, strong—’
‘I know, I know. Jeremy, the last thing almost he said to me was about you. He said you were the perfect English gentleman and we were lucky to have you as a friend.’